


At The Eleventh Hour

by roblingt



Series: Yours, Mine, and... Ours? [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Influenza, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-11
Updated: 2008-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roblingt/pseuds/roblingt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the fighting ends, the healing must begin. And that's Doctor Redfern to you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At The Eleventh Hour

_Meet me in Cardiff next Monday_ , he'd said, and given her a card with a most curious address. She wondered, now, if he'd known. Nothing was too strange to believe anymore. But it had got her away from there, away from those last horrible wasted days of wasting lives, and so Joan Redfern had come to keep her appointment, alighting from the train into a city waking up from a war-weary daze to realise that the long nightmare of bullets and gas was finally over, even if the world still staggered blindly in the killing grip of a plague that seemed positively mediaeval in its ferocity.

She was too early. There was a pub open nearby, bright in defiance of the idea of quarantine for this of all days, and the November wind whipping in from the Channel was enough to drive her inside seeking warmth, warmth and maybe the reassurance of company as she steeled herself to the thought of the interview to come. _All this time silent, and it all comes free with one look_.

 _I wouldn't have thought, that they could be so blue_.

Celebrations well under way inside, and her trained eye shuddered away from the thought that some here must surely be ill already and not know to be wary of passing silent death from hand to hand amongst their comrades. So little, though, that anyone could do -- Joan took herself up to the long bar and waited politely until she could be sure of catching the barman's eye.

He regarded her oddly as he set her order before her on the polished wood. "Pardon me, ma'am, but you look as if you've seen a ghost."

"Haven't we all, though." She smiled, trying to make a joke of it, but he still looked concerned, too worried a frown for an earnest face. "I'm sorry, it's just -- ought you to be open, with the influenza still about? This doesn't seem... _safe_ , to allow people to gather together like this."

"You sound like my best mate. Are you a doctor, then?"

Singular, that, that he hadn't first thought _nurse_? "Doctor Joan Redfern, thank you. It's a courtesy title just now, I'm afraid, although I do feel after these last few years that it's well enough earned." She took a sip of her drink. "Paid for in the blood of the boys I used to look after," she murmured, feeling how the words still caught in her throat even four years and more gone.

Dear lord, his eyes were too old for his face even in these days when any man could be guessed to have seen half his mates die around him, one way or another. "They're always sending boys to be killed somewhere. The Crimea, Flanders, Iraq..." A shudder, as if he'd checked himself from something more he meant to say, and then, more brightly, "Do you mean to work for a proper degree, though? If women can even get the vote there's _really_ no reason not to make it official."

She couldn't help but smile now, some of her own hope for today's new-minted future shining back to her from that open face. "It's funny you should say that, I've only just come to Cardiff today because I've had an offer to look after my training. One of the soldiers who came under my care recently turned out to be, well, a friend of a friend, I should say, and we came to be talking -- I'm sorry, I shouldn't be taking up your time when you're working --"

"I want to know how it comes out, now," he protested cheerily, leaning against the bartop himself to foster the impression of a snatched intimacy between them. "Are you thinking of taking the offer?"

"He -- it's odd, really -- he gave me an address that appears to be at the docks here. I've been thinking that it must be for a company he works with in his civilian capacity, although he did seem to have the air of a military man by nature..."

The trusting face had gone shuttered. "What was the address?" She drew the card out of her pocket and showed it to him, garnering a frown for her troubles. "Right round the corner from here, then; well, you should be _safe_ enough, I wouldn't worry over that --"

( _Another barman calling from the middle of a scrum of orders, "Stop flirting and give us a hand, Davidson_ \--")

A smile that looked oddly forced as the barman handed the card back to her. "Good luck, Doctor Redfern. Torchwood aren't the easiest people to get in to see, but if they've asked for you they must think you're worth their interest."

She hadn't mentioned -- But he'd gone, turned away to serve another customer, and Joan shivered, the weight of the Journal in her handbag heavy as an unanswerable question as she made her way from the pub to meet her appointment with that enigmatic Captain from its pages.


End file.
